noworldsystem.com

Everything you buy is about to become 20% more expensive…

I’m not kidding. The latest idea out of Washington is to pay for its insatiable appetite for spending with what’s called a “Value-Added Tax.”

It’s like a huge new national sales tax, on everything. In simple terms, the difference is that with a sales tax, the consumer pays it. With a “VAT,” the manufacturer pays it. The consumer won’t see it in the price on the shelf or on their receipt.

Politicians love this tax because it’s a stealth tax… You can’t see it when you buy something, but they still get their money. And unless you make your voice known, chances are excellent we’ll eventually have a Value-Added Tax here.

The thing is, making things 20% more expensive here and giving that money to politicians won’t save America. It’ll make us less competitive. For Exhibit A, consider the state of European governments right now…

Greece, for example, has a VAT of 21%. Its government is bankrupt. The Value-Added Tax didn’t save Greece.

Italy and Portugal have a VAT of 20%, and they’re only a little less bankrupt than Greece.

Astoundingly to me, the Value-Added Tax in France has now crept up to a full 50% of France’s government revenues. So how are things going in France with a Value-Added Tax?

France is unable to compete in the world. Unemployment is terminally high. The unemployment rate is now 10% in France. In 2005, the unemployment rate was 10%. And back in 2000, unemployment stood at 11%. Like I said, it’s terminal…

Clearly, the system is not working. So why is the U.S. government in such a hurry to adopt it?

The Wall Street Journal explained it yesterday: “Taxes on the rich can’t begin to finance the levels of new spending that the current government has unleashed… ”

And foreign governments have been less willing to buy our government bonds lately. So the government needs a new source of a lot of money.

At first, a Value-Added Tax will be offered up by politicians as a small tax – just a temporary fix to get us over the hump on our current budget woes. But we know how it will go… Like all taxes (and parasites), it will become permanent in our lives and it will steadily grow. Remember, the VAT in France is now 50% of government revenue.

All we can do right now is let our politicians know we’re against more taxes… because we know down in our toes that governments spend every dollar that comes in… and then some.

Think about it this way: When your child has overspent on the credit card, you don’t hand over a new card to spend on.

We don’t want to give our politicians a new credit card to ring up charges. Reject their request for another massive credit card, in the form of a Value-Added Tax.

Paul Volcker

One of President Obama’s top economic advisers, former Fed chief Paul Volcker, suggested this week that it’s time for America to adopt a VAT, or value-added tax. The White House yesterday downplayed the idea — but it’s sure to resurface: It’s an inevitable consequence of a government that’s too big now and likely to grow even bigger thanks to Washington’s reckless spending spree.

Don’t get me wrong: The VAT — on top of all the other taxes Washington imposes — is a terrible idea. Imposing it would pretty well finish the transformation of our country into a European-style slow-growth nation. The right way to close Uncle Sam’s gaping deficits is to reverse the continued explosion of federal spending.

The VAT is a type of national sales tax, levied on the value-added at each stage of production. Consider a piece of furniture: The VAT would be imposed when the raw timber is sold, when the sawmill produces lumber, when the manufacturer builds a chair, a tax at the wholesaler level and then when a retailer sells the chair to a consumer.

To avoid double taxation, each seller along the way gets a credit for taxes paid at earlier stages of the production process. So the final tax to the consumer, at least in theory, is the same as a retail sales tax of the same amount.

The VAT has its virtues: As a single-rate, consumption-based system, much like the flat tax or national sales tax, it would introduce far fewer economic distortions than today’s income tax — and a heckuva lot less paperwork.

That would be a persuasive argument — if proponents wanted a VAT to replace the Internal Revenue code. But that’s not what’s intended by Volcker — or Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who’ve also been chatting up the VAT.

The politicians want a VAT, and they want to keep the income tax. (To be more accurate, they want a VAT and to raise other taxes as well.)

They want the cash, of course, so they can continue buying votes by spending other people’s money.

This decade already has seen a huge expansion of government. In the Bush years, federal spending rose from $1.8 trillion in 2001 to $3.5 trillion in the last Bush budget. Now President Obama is well on the way to doubling outlays yet again.

He has already saddled the economy with $800 billion of “stimulus” and a giant new health-care entitlement, and his proposals for next year will push the federal budget even higher.

Meanwhile, our aging population and the built-in growth in federal programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security has a dramatic expansion in the size of government set to occur automatically in coming decades.

Simply stated, there’s no way to finance all this new spending without an added broad-based tax. But this is exactly why we should vigorously resist a VAT.

Blocking a VAT may not be sufficient to control the size of government, but it’s necessary. Handing Washington a whole new source of revenue would be akin to giving keys to a liquor store to a bunch of alcoholics.